First Person Peculiar (12 page)
Read First Person Peculiar Online
Authors: Mike Resnick
Tags: #Literature & Fiction, #Science Fiction & Fantasy, #Fantasy, #Anthologies, #Science Fiction, #Short Stories, #Anthologies & Short Stories
I thought Cotter would shit in his expensive suit. “That’s impossible!”
“The hell it is,” she shot back.
“They are
not
sentient,” he said stubbornly. “They are
mimics
. They do not think. They do not know what they are saying.” He stared at her. “Are you sure he didn’t say
‘feed’?
It sounds a lot like
‘eat.’
You’ve got to be mistaken.”
It made sense. I hoped he was right.
“‘Don’t feed me?’” repeated Julie. “The only un-hungry Butterball on the farm?”
“Some of them speak better than others. He could have been clearing his throat, or trying to say something that came out wrong. I’ve even come across one that stutters.” It occurred to me that Cotter was trying as hard to convince himself as he was to convince her. “We’ve tested them a hundred different ways. They’re not sentient. They’re
not!”
“But—”
“Consider the facts,” said Cotter. “I’ve explained that the words sounds alike. I’ve explained that the Butterballs are not all equally skilled at articulation. I’ve explained that after endless lab experiments the top animal behavioral scientists in the world have concluded that they are not sentient. All that is on one side. On the other is that you
think
you may have heard something that is so impossible that any other explanation makes more sense.”
“I don’t know,” she hedged. “It sounded exactly like …”
“I’m sure it did,” said Cotter soothingly. “You were simply mistaken.”
“No one else has ever heard anything like that?” she asked.
“No one. But if you’d like to point out which of them said it …”
She turned toward the pen. “They all look alike.”
I tagged along as the two of them walked over to the Butterballs. We spent about five minutes there, but none of them said anything but
“Feed me!”
and
“Pet me!”
and finally Julie sighed in resignation.
“All right,” she said wearily. “Maybe I was wrong.”
“What do you think, Mr. McNair?” asked Cotter.
My first thought was: what the hell are you asking
me
for? Then I looked into his eyes, which were almost laying out the terms of our agreement, and I knew.
“Now that I’ve had a few minutes to think about it, I guess we were mistaken,” I said. “Your scientists know a lot more about it than we do.”
I turned to see Julie’s reaction.
“Yeah,” she said at last. “I suppose so.” She looked at the Butterballs. “Besides, MacDonald may be a zillionaire and a recluse, but I don’t think he’s a monster, and only a monster could do something like … well … yes, I must have been mistaken.”
And that’s the story. We were not only the first pool of journalists to visit the farm. We were also the last.
The others didn’t know what had happened, and of course Cotter wasn’t about to tell them. They reported what they saw, told the world that its prayers were answered, and only three of them even mentioned the Butterballs’ special talent.
I thought about the Butterballs all during the long flight home. Every expert said they weren’t sentient, that they were just mimics. And I suppose my Butterball could very well have heard someone say that God lived in heaven, just as he could have heard someone use the word “very.” It was a stretch, but I could buy it if I had to.
But where did Julie Balch’s Butterball ever hear a man begging not to be eaten? I’ve been trying to come up with an answer to that since I left the farm. I haven’t got one yet—but I
do
have a syndicated column, courtesy of the conglomerate that owns the publishing company.
So am I going use it to tell the world?
That’s my other problem: Tell it
what?
That three billion kids can go back to starving to death? Because whether Cotter was telling the truth or lying through his teeth, if it comes down to a choice between Butterballs and humans, I know which side I have to come down on.
There are things I can control and things I can’t, things I know and things I am trying my damnedest not to know. I’m just one man, and I’m not responsible for saving the world.
But I
am
responsible for me—and from the day I left the farm, I’ve been a vegetarian. It’s a small step, but you’ve got to start somewhere.
***
Marty Greenberg was doing an anthology of Robin Hood stories, and invited me to write one. I don’t write derring-do, but I knew Marty had a soft spot for Jewish schtick stories, so I came up with Mrs. Hood’s tsouris.
Mrs. Hood Unloads
Yes, Mrs. Grobnik, it’s a new set of tiles. My son the Most Wanted Felon gave them to me. Probably they used to belong to the rabbi’s wife.
He just gave them to me last week. He’d been keeping them for me for three months. Two nights a week he can sneak into the castle and annoy the King, but can he come by for dinner with his mother more than once in three months?
You think you’ve got
tsouris
? Well, God may ignore you from time to time, but He
hates
me.
I don’t mean to complain … but what did I ever do to deserve such a
schmendrik
for a son? I think they must have switched babies at the hospital, I really do. 26 hours I spent in labor, and for what? You work and you slave, you try to give your son a sense of values, and then even when he stops by he gulps his food and can never stay for dessert because the army is after him.
So at least you can write and tell me how you’re doing, Mr. Big Shot, I tell him. And do you know what he says to that? He says he can’t write because he’s illiterate. Me, I say he’s just using that as an excuse.
You break the wall, Mrs. Noodleman. Can I bring anyone some tea?
Well, of course he robs from the rich, Mrs. Grobnik. I mean, what’s the sense of robbing from the poor? But why does he have to rob at all? Why couldn’t he have been a doctor? But he says no, he’s got this calling, that God told him he has to rob from the rich and give to the poor. When I was fourteen, God told me that I was a fairy princess, but you didn’t see me going out and kissing any frogs. Anyway, I tell him that maybe he’s misinterpreting, that maybe God is telling him to be a banker or a real estate broker, but he says no, his holy mission is to rob the rich and give to the poor. So I ask him why he can’t at least charge the poor a ten percent handling fee, and he gives me that look, the same one I used to smack his
tuchis
for when he was a boy.
Pong!
Very good, Mrs. Katz.
No, we’re happy to have you here, Mrs. Katz. I just couldn’t take any more of that Mrs. Nottingham. She’s so hoity-toity and walks around with her nose in the air, and acts like her boy is a lawyer instead of just a policeman. My son the criminal gives away more in a week that her son makes in a year.
You heard
what
, Mrs. Noodleman? You heard him say that he moved to Sherwood Forest because he went off to the Crusades and came back to find out he wasn’t the Lord of the Manor? Well, of course he wasn’t the Lord of the Manor! Was my late husband, Mr. Hood, God rest his soul, the Lord of the Manor? Are my brothers Nate and Jake the Lords of the Manor? Probably ten thousand boys came home and found they weren’t Lords of the Manor—but did
they
go live in the forest and rob their mother’s friends?
He was an apprentice blacksmith, that’s what he was. He probably made up all this Lord of the Manor stuff to impress that
shiksa
Marian.
And while I’m thinking of it, what’s all this
Maid
Marian talk? She doesn’t look like a maid to
me
.
Not so fast, Mrs. Noodleman. I have a flower, so I get an extra tile.
Anyway, you work and you slave, and what does it get you? Your son runs off to the forest and starts wearing a
yarmulkah
with a feather in it, that’s what.
And look who he runs around with—a bunch of merry men! I don’t know if I can bear the shame! Just wish I knew what I ever did to make God hate me so much.
Thank you for your kind words, Mrs. Grobnik, but you just can’t imagine what it’s like. I try to raise him with proper values, and look how it all turns out—he’s dating this Marian person, and his closest friend is a priest, Friar someone-or-other.
Oh, it’s not? Now his best friend is Little John? Well, I don’t want to be the one to gossip, but the stable girl told me what’s so little about
him
.
Chow
, Mrs. Noodleman. I lost track—whose turn is it now?
So he comes by last Thursday, and he gives me these tiles, and he says he can only stay for five minutes because the Sheriff’s men are after him, and he gulps his
gefilte
fish down, and I notice he’s looking thin, so I ask him if he’s getting his greens, and he gives me that look, and he says Ma, of course I’m getting my greens, I live in a forest. So sue me, I say, better I should just sit here in the dark and never even mention that you’re too skinny because you never come by for dinner unless the Sheriff’s men are watching your hide-in.
Hide-out, hide-in, what’s the difference, Mrs. Katz? At least
your
son comes by for dinner every Sunday. The only time I know I’ll see
my
son is when I go to the post office, and there’s his picture hanging on the wall.
Oy!
You’re showing four white dragons, Mrs. Noodleman! You see? I
knew
God hated me!
And he says the next time he comes by—if I haven’t died of old age and neglect by then—he’s going to bring his gang with him. And I say not without a week’s notice, and that I’m not letting this Marian person in the house, no matter what, and even if I do, she isn’t allowed to use the bathroom. And he just laughs that Mr. Big Shot laugh, ho-ho-ho, like he thinks he can wrap me around his little finger. Well, I’ll Mr. Big Shot him right across the mouth if he doesn’t learn a little respect for his mother.
Mah Jong!
All right, so God doesn’t hate me full-time, once in a while He blinks long enough for me to win a game.
By the way, what do you cook for seventy merry
goys
, anyway?
***
I had just won the American Dog Writers Association Award for Best Short Fiction of 1977 with “The Last Dog.” I wrote “Blue” a couple of months later, submitted it to the same market—Hunting Dog Magazine—and won again. The secretary of the organization, who had expressed some distaste for science fiction or fantasy stories, asked me if I planned to do any more. I replied that I’d probably do one a year as long as they were handing out the award. They cancelled the award one week later.
Blue
I had a dog, his name was Blue.
Bet you five dollars he’s a good one too.
Come on, Blue!
I’m a-coming too.
They sing that song about him, Burl Ives and Win Stracke and the rest, but they wouldn’t have been too happy to be locked in the same room with old Blue. He’d as soon take your hand off as look at you.
He wandered out to my shack one day when he was a pup and just plumped himself down and stayed. I always figured he stuck around because I was the only thing he’d ever seen that was even meaner and uglier than he was.
As for betting five dollars on Blue or anything else, forget it. It’s been so long since I’ve seen five dollars that I don’t even remember whose picture is on the bill. Jefferson, I think, or maybe Roosevelt. Money just never mattered much to me, and as long as Blue was warm and dry and had a full belly, nothing much mattered to him.
Each winter we’d shaggy up, me on my face and him just about everywhere, and each summer we’d naked down. Didn’t see a lot of people any time of year. When we did, it’d be a contest to see who could run them off the territory first, me or Blue. He’d win more often than not. He never came back looking for praise, or like he’d done a bright thing; it was more like he’d done a
necessary
thing. Those woods and that river was ours, his and mine, and we didn’t see any reason to put up with a batch of intruders, neither city-slickers nor down-home boys either.
It was a pretty good life. Neither of us got fat, but we didn’t go hungry very often either. And it was kind of good to sit by a fire together, me smoking and him snorting. I don’t think he liked my pipe tobacco, but we had this kind of pact not to bother each other, and he stuck by it a lot better than a couple of women I outlived.
And, Mister, that dog was hell on a cold scent.
Blue chased a possum up a cinnamon tree.
Blue looked at the possum, possum looked at me.
Come on, Blue.
I’m a-coming, too.
Except that it wasn’t a cinnamon tree at all. I don’t ever recollect seeing one. It was just a plain old tree, and I still can’t figure out how the possum got up there all in one piece.
It must have been twenty below zero, and neither of us had eaten in a couple of days. Suddenly Blue put his nose to the ground and started baying just like a bloodhound. Thought he was on the trail of an escaped killer the way he carried on, but it was just an old possum, looking every bit as cold and hungry as we did. The way Blue ran him I thought his heart would burst, but somehow he made it a few feet up the tree trunk. Slashed Blue on the nose a couple of times, just for good measure, but if he thought that would make old Blue run off with his tail between his legs, he had another think coming. Blue just stood there, kind of smiling up at him, and saying, Possum, let’s see you come on down and try that again.
It was a mighty toothy smile.
Baked that possum good and brown.
Laid sweet potatoes all around.
Come on, Blue,
You can have some too.
Never did like possum meat. Even when you bake a possum it tastes just awful. The sweet potatoes were just to kill the flavor. Folksingers and poets live on steak and praise; let ‘em try living on possum for a few days and I bet that verse would come out different.
Anyway, I did offer some to Blue, just like the song says. He looked at it, picked it up, and kind of played with it like a pup dog does when you give him a piece of fruit. At first I thought it was just good taste on Blue’s part, but then his nose started to swell where the possum had nailed him. Usually I’d slap a little mud on a wound like that, but mud’s not the easiest thing to come by when it’s below zero, so I rubbed some snow on instead.
First time in his life Blue ever snarled at me.
When old Blue died he died so hard,
He jarred the ground in my back yard.
Go on, Blue.
I’ll get there too.
Guess the possum had rabies or something, because Blue just got worse and worse. His face swelled up like a balloon, and some of the fire went out of his eyes.
We stayed in the shack, me tending to him except when I had to go out and shoot us something to eat, and him just getting thinner and thinner. I kept trying to make him rest easier, and I could see him fighting with himself, trying not to bite me when I touched him where it hurt.
Then one day he started foaming at the mouth, and howling something awful. And suddenly he turned toward me and got up on his feet, kind of shaky-like, and I could tell he didn’t know who I was any more. He went for me, but fell over on his side before he got halfway across the floor.
I only had a handful of bullets left to last out the winter, but I figured I’d rather eat fish for a month than let him lie there like that. I walked over to him and put my finger on the trigger, and suddenly he stopped tossing around and held stock-still. Maybe he knew what I was going to do, or more likely it was just that he always held still when I raised my rifle. I don’t know the reason, but I know we each made things a little easier for the other in that last couple of seconds before I squeezed the trigger.
When I get to Heaven, first thing I’ll do
Is grab my horn and call for Blue.
Hello, Blue.
Finally got here too.
That’s the way the song ends. It’s a right pretty sentiment, so I suppose they had to sing it that way, but Heaven ain’t where I’m bound. Wouldn’t like it anyhow; white robes and harp-strumming and minding my manners every second. Besides, winter has always chilled me to the bone; I
like
heat.
But when I get to where I’m going, I’ll look up and call for him, and Blue will come running just like he always did. He’ll have a long way to go before he finds me, but that never stopped old Blue. He’ll just put his nose to the ground, and pretty soon we’ll be together again, and he’ll know why I did what I did to him.
And we’ll sit down before the biggest fire of all, me smoking my pipe and him twitching and snorting like always. And maybe I’ll pet him, but probably I won’t, and maybe he’ll lick me, but probably he won’t. We’ll just sit there together, and we’ll know everything’s okay again.
Hello, Blue. I finally got here too.
***